guy ritchie Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's only a matter of time before Guy Ritchie went back to the gangster filled underworld ... but he might do it to snappy showtunes. According to UK paper The Sun, Ritchie is reportedly itching to take on a remake of Guys and Dolls.

Supposedly, Ritchie and Jason Statham have been joking about writing a musical for sometime, one that would be "a cross between Worzel Gummidge and Bullitt." Now, Worzel Gummidge is a walking, talking scarecrow familiar to British children. He talks kind of like a Ritchie character, but I'm at a loss as to what a hybrid between Worzel and Steve McQueen would look like. Thankfully, we may never find out as he's willing to give up his Worzel Gummidge laced dreams for Guys and Dolls.

Rumors of a remake have been rampant for years (usually with Hugh Jackman's name attached), and with Damn Yankees being green-lit, it wouldn't surprise me if it's picking up some serious steam. Nor would it surprise me if Ritchie became attached, as he seems to be earning Sherlock Holmes goodwill. So, despite story's dubious origins and Madonna jabs, there's just enough here to make it worth talking about. If nothing else, we can use this space to bang the drum and remind whoever does land Guys and Dolls to cast Ewan McGregor as Sky Masterson. I'm still kicking myself that I missed him on the West End, and a movie would soothe those regrets nicely. Now, who to play Nathan Detroit ...

You'll never hear me say a nasty thing about Robert Downey Jr., as I have a lot of respect for the man and a lot of appreciation for the films he's done ... but having said that, I cannot help but express the following opinion: The trailer for his new movie looks like, well, like no Sherlock Holmes story I've ever seen. Obviously one can never judge an unfinished film by the quality of its promotional materials, but if this clip is what we can expect from the whole of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, I'm ... well, I'm still interested. But now highly skeptical. And a little shocked.

I guess my main question is this: If your goal is to make a Victorian-era action comedy, and that sounds good to me, why must it be called Sherlock Holmes? (I'd suggest Sherlock Holmes and the Deluge of Weird Changes.) I'll leave it to the experts to pick the specific nits, but I'm betting the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories didn't have quite so many gunfights, boxing matches, explosions, and crotch jokes. At this point the thing looks like Young Sherlock Holmes meets The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vs. Van Helsing: At World's End ... which, I'll admit, could still be a lot of fun.

Some of us abhor vacuums, while others merely ignore them. Either way, those gaps tend to fill themselves, so that the willing world may indeed discover what a musical set to the tunes of ABBA must look like, or even how an urban answer to Guy Ritchie's twisty comic-violent crime capers would turn out.

Enter Benny Boom, a music video director with the most explosive name this side of Olivier Megaton and his sights set on transplanting one of those topsy-turvy capers from the underbelly of London to the shadier side of Philadelphia. It's a capable, if unremarkable relocation, because Next Day Air does exactly what a Snatch-savvy crowd would expect -- introduce maybe a dozen greedy criminals to one botched crime and let them fall all over each other to get the goods and get out alive -- and not much more.

The first trailer will be attached to Terminator: Salvation. Will we all start drooling like they did after ShoWest? I hope so. I really want this film to meet my expectations.

Blame this on Anderson Cooper and the exhaustive coverage of President and First Lady Obama's trip to London. I can never see my favorite city on television without wanting to board a plane, and since I can't do that right this moment, I must haul every British film out and watch it to get my fix of Anglophilia.

Of course, few London visitors get close to the underworld inhabited by Guy Ritchie -- though the Obamas might meet a few Snatch characters if they get close to the protesters. (I'm not talking the ones who actually are there for real reasons, I'm talking about the ones just chugging lager cans because, well, why not. If you saw any of the news footage, you know what I mean.) I can't find my favorite "Who took the jam out of your doughnut?" scene, so "Two minutes!" will have to do.

I can't believe this film is nearly ten years old. Remember 2000, when people still liked Ritchie, Swept Away wasn't on the radar, Brad Pitt was kind of edgy, and Jason Statham was an ordinary Englishman, not a ripped demigod? How time flies ... and the thought takes the jam right out of my doughnut.

I'm inside the oldest church in London, tucked into a cold, creepy corner with three other online journalists, and we're sitting on wooden benches older than our grandfather's grandfather while mega-producer Joel Silver speaks right through the loud gun shots going off in the background as if they didn't even exist. Surreal? Yes. Exhilarating? Definitely. Over in the main section of the church, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) are filming a crucial scene on three cameras (before they switch to hand-held), while Guy Ritchie -- who, might I add, directs wearing a nice, sharp grey suit -- strums an acoustic guitar between shots. Even though there are roughly 40-or-so crew members lingering about, this is probably one of the more intimate sets I've ever been on. It's dusty, spooky and kinda dangerous; above me hangs a memorial stone engraved in Latin, and all I understand are the dates 1582-1616 scrolled underneath. God, this place is old.

Later on, as we stand around a set of monitors, someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn to find Joel Silver with a laptop, a pair of headphones and a smile a mile wide. Though they'd only been shooting this film for three weeks, Ritchie managed to cut together a scene and he wanted us to see it. I sit down, Silver delicately places the laptop on the table in front of me, and as the realization sets in that I'm practically the first person to view an actual scene from one of the most talked-about films of 2009, he hits play. Roughly two minutes later, I stand up, look over to Silver (who's obviously waiting for a response), and the only words that manage to escape my mouth are: "Now that's Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes!"

We'll have much more from the set of Sherlock Holmes (including interviews with Downey Jr., Jude Law, Joel Silver, Eddie Marsan and producers Susan Downey and Lionel Wigram) at a later date. The film is due in theaters on November 20, 2009.